Do Jesus Christ and his great commandments of love correspond with Eastern traditions? Of course they do. Read an excerpt from Paramahansa Yogananda’s commentary on the Bible.
And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
He said unto him, “What is written in the law? How readest thou?”
And he answering said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.”
And he said unto him, “Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10:25–28).
Parallel passage from the Gospel of Mark:
And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, “Which is the first commandment of them all?”
And Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is, ‘Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength’: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:28–31).
The whole purpose of religion—indeed, of life itself—is encapsulated in the two paramount commandments cited by Lord Jesus in these verses. In them lies the essence of eternal truth distinguishing all bona fide spiritual paths, the irreducible imperative that man must embrace as an individualized soul separated from God if he would reclaim the realization of oneness with his Maker. […]
The First Commandment leads the devotee into observance of the second great spiritual law, “like unto it.” As one strives to feel God within, he has also a duty to share his experience of God with his neighbors: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor (all races and creatures anywhere with whom one comes in contact) as thyself (as you love your own soul)—because you see God in everyone.” Man’s neighbor is the manifestation of his greater Self or God. The soul is a reflection of Spirit, a reflection that is in every being and in the vibratory life of all animate and inanimate cosmic decor. To love parents, relatives, associates, countrymen, all races of the earth, all creatures, flowers, stars, which live in the “neighborhood” or range of one’s consciousness is to love God in His multifarious tangible manifestations. Those persons yet unable to love God as His subtle expressions in meditation can nurture their love for Him as manifested in nature and in all beings they contact or sense in any way.
It is God who becomes the father to protect the child, the mother to love the child unconditionally, and friends to help that incarnate soul without the limitation of familial instincts. It is God who has become the adorned earth with its canopy of stars to amuse His children with wonder. It is He who has become the food and the breath and the sustaining life functions of the multitude of mortal forms. When God’s immanence penetrates man’s understanding, it awakens man to his duty and privilege to worship God templed in himself (through meditation), and templed in all beings and things in the universe (through love of his neighbor in the proximity of his cosmic home).
Even saints who love God in transcendental ecstasy in meditation find complete redemption only after they have shared their divine attainment by loving God as manifested in all souls in the omnipresent neighborhood of their soul.
Encouraged by love for God in meditation, one might best begin soul neighborliness by reaching out in helpfulness to persons who are outside one’s family, yet are nearer than the world at large. Persons instinctively show preference in giving to their families rather than to strangers; and the idea of “the world” itself is a concept far removed and abstract. But when a person lives just for himself and the select few he chooses to favor as his own, he chokes the expansion of his life, and from the spiritual standpoint he does not live at all. On the contrary, when a person extends his sympathy and caring from the “us four and no more” consciousness to his neighbors and to the world, his little life flows into the greater life of God and becomes the Eternal Life—the second requisite in answer to the question put to Christ by the lawyer, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”
Most people live in narrow walls of selfishness, never feeling the throb of the universal life of God. Anyone who lives without knowing that his life comes from the eternal life, who abides a solely material existence, dies and reincarnates forgetful of past lives, has not really lived. His mortal consciousness wandered through delusive dream experiences, but his true Self, the soul, never awoke to express its godly nature and immortality. By contrast, any devotee who by meditation realizes the eternal life behind his mortal life lives forever never losing his conscious existence at the time of death, or from one incarnation to another, or in the eternity of soul freedom in God.
Saints and sages who fulfill the two preeminent commandments are no longer subservient to the discipline of other commandments, for in loving God in transcendental meditation and as manifested in others, the righteousness in all cosmic laws is honored automatically. In the devotee with God-contact, the Framer of Cosmic Law works as a natural intuitive goodness that keeps him always in harmony with the universal codes of God. Millenniums of darkness gathered around the soul may be dispelled gradually by little flames of observance of numerous rules of conduct. But when, by supreme effort of the heart, mind, and strength, the all-pervading light of God visits the soul, then darkness is no more; the advent of the Great Light engulfs the flickering illumination of disciplined actions. Therefore, to love God through continuous prayer and meditation, and to love God through physical, mental, and spiritual service to His manifestations in one’s universal family of neighbors, is the support and essence of the entirety of other laws of human conduct and liberated lives.
A rebirth of loving God and loving one’s neighbor as urged by Jesus Christ would bring a spirit of oneness to heal the ills of the world.
Only by fellowship with God will harmony and fellowship come on earth. When one actually perceives the Divine Presence in his own soul, he is inspirited with love for his neighbor—Jew and Christian, Muslim and Hindu—in the consciousness that one’s true Self and the Selves of all others are equally soul-reflections of the one infinitely lovable God. Utopian social and political agendas will have little long-lasting benefit until humanity learns the eternal science by which followers of any religion may know God in the oneness of soul and Spirit communion.
To observe the “first commandment,” as cited by Jesus, is the centric obligation of human life, subordinating and making servile to it the host of demanding responsibilities man gathers unto himself. Jesus supported the scriptural command to “Honor thy father and mother” but love God supremely. Father, mother, friends, beloved ones, are gifts of God. Love the One Love that hides Himself behind all kindly masks. Love Him first and foremost, or times without numbering He will visit the heart and slip away unrecognized and unwelcomed.
To be with God now is of utmost importance. His love is the only shelter in life and death. Time should be utilized to its best advantage; why shouldn’t it be to reclaim oneness with the Creator of this Universe, our Infinite Father?”
The following excerpts are from the book The Yoga of Jesus: Understanding the Hidden Teachings of the Gospels, by Paramahansa Yogananda, reprinted with permission from Self-Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, California, https://yogananda.org. All rights reserved.
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